GT-R Progress

A bit of progress. Not the best model I've done, but that's okay I'm just gettign up to speed.

Have the car "In Game ", as they say. I have the same shaing issues as I have experienced on some edges. It seems to be where I have done an extrusion. Note the front and the top of the hood where the vents are located. I have hadd the issue before and never understood the fix, although I was able to correct some by flipping and deleting some poly's. Too much work for this one, I'm just going to finish it up and move on to the next. Paint job is underway. Yellow base colour hides nothing, so there you go we will see what the final looks like. This is the part I enjoy the most actually. When complete, this is the only GT-R with two hood scoops. I will have to reverse engineer it back to AC3D clean up the scoops and then export it back through the process. I can't start with the original AC3D because I had to recentre the model in zMod because it was dragging through the ground. Additionally, if you look closely at the headlight buckets, the wheels poke through a bit. I may fix that as well, but only if I feel picky, (it depends on my mood, I am not a natural at "perfect"). There is one poly on the right side that is not right either so I will have a look at that as well. Want to do the two versions, but I don't know how many others I will do.

Next Steps Mapping

Completed the modelling.

I then merge everything into one to make it be easier to work with. At this point I set all the surfaces to the same colour, different colour bases will show shaded hues under the mapping further down stream, in other tools.

Believe it or not, then I begin to break it down again, not by model structure but by surface normals for mapping. What I am looking for here is tow things; as flat of surface as I can find and where I want to add detail by using graphics. For instance if you know an area will have fine lettering you want a larger surface. Rather flat area of basic colour, like a diffuser, you can make it small.

Then I map the surfaces into three 1024 by 1024 files. I use BMP format because that is what is supported in the target game. In each graphic I have a small default colour, generally a flat black. I select everything and stuff it into the little colour square. This insures if I miss anything, it will be mapped to the ingame graphics and not have an extra, AC3D default material in the final package.

Working object by object I begin to map a surface to a location on the graphic. I map some pieces, then export the UV Map, place it in the graphic, use it as a guide for the next mapping and for the final graphic detail. You can see in the sample the surfaces. There not a one to one match with an objects and I have added on layer of detail garphic, the yellow side to show what I mean. This makes it easier to "paint" the details on the car.

I always use three BMP's. I call Primary, Secondary and Gass. I have shown the ones for the GT-R here for reference. This is a function of the restriction in the target game. Must be BMP's, square, no larger than 1024 pixels and if they are to be transparent, like the glass all on a single BMP. Seems restrictive, but thats not the worst. To export it into the format for SCGT, it is a problem for sure. More on that another day, for now I am just going to go step by step. Funny I know I have written about mapping before but each time I do it, because I start and stop, I relearn and learn new things a lot of the time. Maybe one day I will stop re-inventing the wheel.

Last step is, you guessed it merging it back into three objects, coresponding to to the object on a single map. At the end there are three objects, each with a single map.

You see, I just thought, I didn't resize, I will have to keep the porportions the same, or the graphics are skewed, aaaaaaaaahhhhhggggggg.